Cool New Features at ClimbingWeather.com

Mobile/SMS Forecasts

Mobile/SMS Forecasts are finally here! After many long months of trying to get this feature out, it is finally available. Now you can get ClimbingWeather.com area forecasts sent to your mobile phone via text messages. This is especially useful for when you are on the road and/or have intermittent cell phone access. No sign-up necessary! You can subscribe to one area at a time, specify the days of the week, time of day and start/end dates.

Improved Search, Blog Aggregator - More Videos and Photos

We've improved our site search! You can still do proximity searches by zip codes, but we have improved search capabilities. Now you can find areas easier by searching for nearby town, state or area description.

Also, a new blog aggregator has been added to the site. We're not great at updating our own blog, so we thought it might be useful to bring together climbing blogs from all over. This is a good way to stay up-to-date on what is going on in the climbing world.

We now have more videos and photos! We pulled in a fresh batch of photos from Flickr via the Creative Commons license (thanks to all those climbing photographers with generous licensing). Also, we're updating our videos on a regular basis from YouTube. The quality of the feed isn't always great - sometimes non-climbing videos get into the mix. We're working on giving you a way to mark videos as 'Not Climbing'.

Temperatures in Celsius

It is now possible to view temperatures in Celsius. To switch to Celsius, click on the 'Convert to Celsius' link in the upper right corner of any page on the site. The temperatures will now be displayed in Celsius, with a 'C' following the degree symbol. Temperatures will continue to be displayed in Celsius even when you leave and return to the site, provided you are using the same computer and browser. To switch back to Fahrenheit, click the 'Convert to Fahrenheit' link at the top right any page on the site (the link changes when you switch temperature units).

Google Maps on Area Pages

Google maps have now been added to the area pages, allowing you to see exact geographical point where the forecast applies. We also want your help in adjusting any locations to get more accurate forecasts for a particular area, so we've added a way for you to easily suggest a new forecast location. Just click on the map - a new marker will appear - and move that marker to the new location. Then, fill out the short form and submit it to us. We'll review it and determine if we need to move the forecast location.

Enhanced Search Results

We recently added the 5-day forecast to the search results page. This works well with proximity search when looking for areas close to a specific area that has upcoming good weather.

Proximity Search

Proximity search allows you to search for weather using a United States zip code. Instead of only returning results for that specific zip code, it will do a 'proximity search', returning the closest climbing areas to that zip code.

For example, a search for the zip code 25850(Fayetteville, WV) returns results for New River Gorge (2 miles), Summersville Lake (15 miles), Seneca Rocks (106 miles), Stone Mountain (119 miles) and more.

Currently, the proximity search is based on distances 'as the crow flies', not driving distances. Hopefully, we can add driving distances in the future.

Monthly Averages

Monthly averages for nearly every climbing area have been added. This displays the average monthly high, low, mean temperature and precipitation for National Weather Service station located nearest to the climbing area. In most cases, the weather station is within 10-20 miles of the climbing area, however, the distance from climbing area and elevation are displayed, in the event that adjustments need to be made.

To view the monthly averages, click on any climbing area and view the table on the area page.